Interview with Vinod Chandramouli, Head, ASEAN Business, Freshworks
1.) What are some of the key dissatisfactions in terms of employees’ engagement?
Before the pandemic, employee engagement took place in hallways, cafeterias, and team meetings. Interactions between colleagues were constant and facilitated through workplace design and company perks.
Now with remote working as the norm, employees may feel isolated without an open environment to engage with colleagues. The boundaries between work and personal times begin to blur, which can reduce overall productivity and efficiency. Home offices come with its own distractions and employees may not feel as accountable as they were in the office. Without encouragement from managers in the current environment, employees become more dissatisfied and unmotivated.
Another issue employees face is social isolation which makes employees feel lonely as a result of being separated from their colleagues. This could result in productivity loss. Employees also become dissatisfied when they don't feel acknowledged and recognised. Employees who feel their leaders care about them individually, value them for the unique contribution they bring to the team and the organisation, and recognise and incentivise those contributions are much more likely to be engaged in their jobs.
2.) How do organisations action a better employee engagement strategy?
Organisations can implement a host of strategies to improve employee engagement. These strategies must be tailored to the organisation's needs and reflect its core values to create a cohesive work culture.
Key features of great employee engagement strategies provide new opportunities for professional growth, include efforts to show appreciation and encouragement to colleagues, value accountability, encourage team building, and offer a framework for transparency within the organisation so that employees are in the loop.
Technology is also a critical element of employee engagement, especially today with many employees still working remotely. Organisations must adopt the right technologies to help them do their job well. It is not enough to have just any old technology. It must be fit for purpose.
3.) The survey indicates that 82% say employees’ happiness on the job is significantly impacted by how well their workplace technology performs. Why this is so?
Employees expect workplace technology to be easy to use, and these expectations are growing as younger professionals enter the workforce. Workplace technologies are also expected to help employees get their job done more efficiently and without friction.
In many ways, technology can really make or break employee engagement. If the organisation's technologies are too difficult to use or do not make an employee's job easier, their ability to be engaged in their work decreases. In fact, the survey also found that over two-thirds of good employees will look for a new position if they do not receive the tools, technology, and information to help them do their jobs well.
4.) Freshworks’ take on customer engagement?
Customers expect exceptional, frictionless experiences and support throughout their purchase journey. They expect to be able to contact a business at a time convenient to them, through the channel of their choice, from any device anywhere. Organisations need to have a customer engagement framework that reflects this understanding of consumer expectations.
Freshworks is redefining the contours of customer engagement with Freshworks 360, a unified, omnichannel, cross-product customer engagement suite that allows customers to reach customer service departments through their preferred channel. The unified suite provides relevant context to customer service representatives and routes queries to available agents so that customers receive better service, faster.
5.) How do they measure happiness level in organizations?
Freshworks measures employee happiness through their experiences with technology; specifically, the amount of time spent on an IT incident or request.
On an average, the time lost per incident in IT is about three hours - employees are happy when an IT incident is resolved in less than 3 hours;likewise, unhappy when an incident is dragged on and not properly managed.
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| Happy employees, happy workplace |
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash
6.) Best practices to increase and maintain happy sentiment in organizations.
Each organisation has its way of cultivating employee happiness to drive higher productivity and efficiency. Some best practices of successful organisations include:
- Creating a safe, positive environment and encouraging work life balance
- Being transparent and encouraging employees to share their thoughts
- Appreciating and rewarding great work
- Encouraging communication within the organisation regardless of team or title
- Providing training opportunities to upskill the workforce
- Leading by example.
7.) Covid-19 has put everybody in a tough scenario: The company is not doing well, sales are bad. Bonuses are not forthcoming. While it is understood that technology deployment can help to mitigate bad sentiment, what about the cost of implementation of better technology? How do affected companies get to deal with that? Any suggestions?
Fresh works CRM tools are offered via a subscription-based model, which that can help organisations manage their budget as they do not need to invest in an upfront cost, especially during the Covid-19. Instead of committing to a product, customers can try out different items and find what they like best through subscriptions, and companies using the model capture recurring and predictable income from customers. Our paid plans start from an affordable price of $29 a month.
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